One great thing about being an instructional designer is that you are constantly learning. Most new assignments involve new content. Ready to Design Anything So learning is great, but it can be terrifying to design for a learning program when you start out not knowing a thing about the content. Here are some suggestions: 1.… Continue Reading
When you’re new at presenting something, the biggest concern is that you might embarrass yourself. You think about all the things that can go wrong. It’s unnerving. Eventually, you get over the fear of falling and focus instead on what’s good for your learners and for the organizations they serve. First: Presentation Skills. You just… Continue Reading
If we want to design a program that helps people to learn, we talk about many things, including… Providing the right kind of practice I recently reviewed an elearning program, and I was struck by how difficult it can be to provide the appropriate practice. An Easy Example For concepts, it’s generally not enough to… Continue Reading
Want to make learning easier? This ice breaker is fun, but more importantly, it also helps participants to “wake up what they already know” about a topic. Is “waking stuff up” important? Yes! Here’s why: We learn by adding to what we already know. When we get people to think about what they know already—even… Continue Reading
Sooner or later, organizations responsible for providing learning & development opportunities have to decide whether to measure how they’re doing. It’s a great idea to use measures to… Improve what we offer (to do a better job) Prove that what we offer is worthwhile (show why we should keep our jobs) What shall I count… Continue Reading
One of my university profs had a knack for explaining complicated chemistry concepts and processes. As he spoke, he watched the students’ expressions. If they looked confused, he would explain again another way—until people clearly “got it.” His goal was not to get through his lectures; it was to make sure that we understood what… Continue Reading
I described this process to a director who works in a Fortune 500 company the other day… You go to class (or take one online). You learn how to follow a procedure or process to make the world better in some way… Coaching Your Employees Managing Time Project Management Any Number of Other Things But!… Continue Reading
Interpersonal Skills are a combination of affective and cognitive skills. They are a content type that doesn’t always make the lists of content types. At a big meeting of training, organizational development, and various other flavors of performance improvement professionals at a large Fortune 500 company, we had a little incident. Barry (not his real… Continue Reading
One of the little chores that can take time and be really tedious is figuring out timing for a workshop or event. Now that I see such an easy way to do this, I cannot believe the amount of time I’ve spent trying to estimate timing, then adjusting for one thing, then maybe adding or… Continue Reading
What do you do if you’re pretty sure people are going to hate a class, but they have to take it anyway? Here’s an example… I had to teach people who were losing their jobs how to coach the new people who would take over their work. (Yikes!) A big company (which shall remain nameless)… Continue Reading
